The Virtue of Fools
by Ruuger
Summary: A lonely night in the basement office. Sort of an pre episode fic for Audrey Pauley. Written for the Lyric Wheel Challenge in spring 2004.


**Author's notes: **Thanks to Pollyanna for the beta. This story was originally written for the Lyrics Wheel Challenge (the song in question was "Beginnings" by Chicago, and it was sent to me by Aqualegia). The story was originally titled "Pencils and Silence", the current title comes from Francis Bacon.

* * *

Another pencil falls from the ceiling, landing in her coffee cup, knocking it down. It is the third pencil that day, and the third time she considers climbing up on the desk and taking down every single one of the damned pencils that are still stuck to the tiles. Instead she takes some tissues from her bag and wipes away the coffee.

"You see now why I prefer this desk?"

She looks up at John who is sitting behind the other desk across the room. "I thought you were being a gentleman by letting me have the bigger desk."

He laughs and shakes his head. "Nah, I just don't like getting concussed by falling pencils."

He is about to say something more, but the sound of construction work drowns out his voice, and he only shrugs and starts to read again.

Across the corridor workers are repairing some broken pipes, the drilling and the hammering making the walls vibrate, causing the rain of pencils that has been bothering her all day.

With a sigh she also returns to her reading, the never-ending pile of papers cluttering her desk. Phone logs, interrogation transcripts, surveillance reports, the collected paraphernalia of a case that seems less and less like an x-file the more she reads.

She leans her elbows on the table, covers her ears with her hands to block out the noise and tries to concentrate on the report in front of her.

They continue working through the afternoon. Every now and then she or John comments on something, or asks a question, but mostly they are silent.

Another pencil falls, but this time she catches it before it hits the desk. Looking up she sees that there are only two more pencils left and remembers a conversation she had with John on a similar Friday night. Him telling her how the pencils reminded him of the fact that the basement office wasn't his office - their office - but rather Mulder's. He was joking then, but when she looks around her, she sees the walls plastered with Mulder's posters and newspaper cuttings, the file cabinets filled with Mulder's casefiles, and Mulder's pencils hanging above her head like the sword of Damocles.

She is again possessed by the urge to take down the pencils, but she doesn't give into it, knowing that even after those last two pencils are gone, the ghost of Mulder will still remain. And as much as she admires Mulder and feels dedicated to continue his work, she isn't quite sure if she actually even wants to feel at home in the basement office.

She thinks about Mulder on the run and Scully alone with her child, and she thinks about herself and John, spending their Friday night reading reports in the office when it would have been so much easier to simply work at home. Thinks about how they both have started coming to work early and leaving late, meeting for lunch on Sunday afternoons to 'talk about the case' even when there is no case.

And then she realizes that the sound of workers from across the hall has stopped hours ago.

Monica closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, concentrating on the room, the aura of the place, and the universe shrinks down until it contains nothing but her own breathing and the sound of rustling paper across the room.

"You're not falling asleep on the job, are you?"

She opens her eyes to see that John is watching her with a grin.

She looks at the four pencils lying on the desk in front of her, and thinks of the empty apartment waiting for her.

"Let's just go, John," she says quietly and John's amusement turns into confusion.

"What do you mean?"

She takes the pencils, puts them into the drawer, and then walks across the room to him.

"Let's just go home, John. We're probably the last people left in the building. We can finish this Monday."

He puts down his papers slowly and for a moment she is afraid he might say no, that the reason why he is working late is not the same as hers.

"You're right, maybe we should call it a day," he finally answers, and begins to put away his papers. She turns around to go to tidy her own desk when he calls after her.

"I was wondering," he asks hesitantly, "that maybe... maybe we could do something before going home. Have a beer, perhaps?"

"Yeah," she replies with a smile, "maybe we could."


End file.
